


coloured stains

by military_bluebells



Series: Generation Kill Week [5]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Generation Kill Week, Getting Together, Humor, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Multi, technically, this sounds wayyy darker than it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:35:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27032032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/military_bluebells/pseuds/military_bluebells
Summary: AU where if your soulmate gets hurt, it shows up as a coloured stain on you.
Relationships: Brad Colbert/Nate Fick/Walt Hasser/Ray Person
Series: Generation Kill Week [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1967950
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	coloured stains

**Author's Note:**

> Day 5: FUBAR/ **Soulmates AU** / Accidental Kid

When he's sixteen, Brad's first stain appears on his left knee. He feels the tight pain of scrapped skin and when he looks down, there is a grass green stain in its place. It looks inhuman but he decides he likes the shade. It means that his soulmate is now over thirteen though by how much Brad doesn't know. 

His sister won’t get her stains for another five years, so he lets her entertain herself with his. He knows his parent's colours – a dark purple for his mother, a soft grey for his father – and he wonders what shade of blue his stain is because no other colour makes sense. From that point on, he gets a few more stains, the majority being paper cuts on his fingers and the odd bruise on his shins. 

He gets his own cuts and bruises from surfing, a rash on his chest from the abrasive waves that he isn’t sure will appear on his soulmate, but he makes sure to wear a rash guard after that, just in case. He cuts his calf on the fibreglass fin of his board at a competition, which hurts more than anything else he’s ever done. His parents drive him to the ER and he thinks the stain will last a while. The back and forth goes on for two years, not so frequently that either of them are reckless but enough that Brad knows that his soulmate is still around. 

When he's eighteen, four thin lines of corn yellow appear on his forearm, and he learns that he has more than one soulmate and that the second one has a cat. They fall into another rhythm; the yellow soulmate is much safer than either him or the green one but every now and then, there will be scratches or bruises. On one occasion, Brad wakes up to a massive yellow stain on his back, but the pain is minimal so he thinks it's just bruising. 

Then, at the end of his freshman year of college, the red stains appear. 

The first one appears on his right knee as a blood red mark, so realistic that his mother rushes over with the first aid kit and frets around cleaning up the blood. It’s on the second wet wipe that they both realise the wound isn’t on Brad. 

From then, there is always a red stain on him. They stay on his knees and elbows for the first couple of months, occasionally appearing on the pads of his fingers. Whoever they are, they’re reckless and getting more so as the stains start to add up. Blood red handprints appear on his arms during spring break and his knuckles are almost permanently red. His concern grows as the stains triple, many hidden under his clothes. 

Brad hits his limit when he wakes up with a gasp and finds a blood red handprint around his throat like a collar. It’s painfully obvious and people stare as he walks through campus to his councillor, who tells him there’s little he can do if he doesn’t know who or where his soulmate is. 

He goes back to his dorm, followed by stares. His dormmates have found through the grapevine by then and Poke pushes into his room to give his two cents. Brad humours him as he stares at the hand in the mirror, anger bubbling under his skin. It’s one thing for his soulmate to be reckless and skin their knees every two weeks but it’s another for someone else to lay their hand on them. Brad moves before he thinks, and puts his right hand through the mirror into the wall behind it. 

“Shit, dawg.” Poke says but Brad ignores him. As he picks out the glass from his bleeding knuckles, he hopes they will turn blood red. 

-

  


Nate had contented himself with two soulmates, one corn yellow and the other ice blue. Both are like him - careful - though the long slash along his calf and large stain on his back had been a reminder that accidents happen. However, when he's sixteen, he is reminded that not everyone has an easy life either. 

Red covers his body at all times and it hurts to watch the stains change from innocent cuts and bruises to clear evidence of abuse. He spends a long time looking at the handprint around his neck and remembering the breathlessness that had woken him. His mom doesn’t send him to school and for once his sisters stay nothing when it comes to the blood red stains. He thinks the colour makes it worse but then he reflects that a handprint is still a handprint even if it’s in a soft lilac or sunset orange. If anything, he’s glad it's shocking, glad that people can’t ignore it for what it is. On the second day, he makes a point of going to school as an act of solidarity because somewhere his soulmate is suffering and if they can’t hide, he won’t either. 

His friends walk on eggshells and his teachers frown, but Nate holds his head high and grins with a sharp feeling he can’t name when his right knuckles turn ice blue. In a truly idiotic - primal - move, he lights a splint in the Bunsen burner in his chemistry class and holds it against the back of his left wrist until his skin burns. His friends stare and when he’s asked by a school councillor, all he says is ‘they need to know they’re not alone’. A yellow line appears along his left thumb soon after. 

After that, the handprints disappear along with stains on his chest from fists and the others. Moreover, for a whole week, his body doesn’t have any red stains on it at all. He feels a sense of triumph so strong, he can't help but yell as loud as he can when he gets to a secluded part of Boston on his daily cycle. The red reappears of course because his soulmate is definitely wild, but Nate doesn’t worry, only making note of any anonymous ones, just in case. In one big way, the experience is what inspires Nate to look into a pre-law course. 

The next two years are quiet apart from a twisted ankle in ice blue, a plethora of stains in blood red and lots of bruises and scrapes in corn yellow. He observes those closely for signs of abuse, but if they are, there is little way Nate can be sure, since they aren’t as obvious as the blood red ones had been. They taper off however and Nate puts it down to his soulmate learning a new sport. 

The peace after that is shattered very violent a year later. 

Nate is at a dorm party because he wants to see as many of his friends as he could before his sophomore year picks up. He has a drink in his hand and is chatting with one of the people from his pre-law course when a sharp burst of excruciating pain shoots through his side. He falls back against the wall and slides to the floor, his drink spilling over his pants as his classmate calls his name. With shaking hands, he pulls up his shirt and stares at the inch and half long – blood red – line to the right of his belly button. 

“No, no, no.” Nate breathes as someone crouches in front of him. 

“Are you hurt?” they asks, and Nate shakes his head. A small crowd has formed around him, and Nate realises what the blood red mark must look like. 

“It’s my soulmate, they’ve been stabbed.” With help, Nate stands and gets back to his room. It hurts to look at the line, but Nate forces himself to because it could be the last time he ever sees the colour. Ice blue blooms along both of his knuckles and Nate chuckles and asks one of his friends for their lighter. He burns a spot under his ribs, where the pain of the stab wound is low but humming. A yellow line appears not long after. 

-

  


Walt feels awful for causing his soulmate more pain but as his knuckles turn blue and a patch of green appears below his ribs, he needs to add his own mark for them to see too. He sneaks down to the kitchen and grabs one of the knives off the rack. The last time he'd done this, it had been chopping vegetables and he could pretend it was an accident, but this time he’s holding the knife to his arm and it's different. 

“Son?” Walt blinks the tears out of his eyes and looks to his dad, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. 

“They’re hurt, badly.” He shows his dad the thin red line on his stomach. He knows what it means and what could happen, could be happening right now. His dad frowns and sits next to him, taking the knife from his hand. “I just… I just want them to know that I’m here.” Walt rushes as tears blur his vision. His dad pulls him into his arms and Walt cries into his shoulder. When he’s done, his dad picks up the knife and draws a shallow line across his left forearm before cleaning and wrapping it up. He doesn’t sleep until another red stain appears on his left bicep, like his soulmate pinched themselves just to say they’re alive. Walt smiles when that stain comes back everyday even as no other red stains appear. 

The next few months are quiet: everyone is extra careful because they don’t want to cause their soulmate any more pain as they recover. The first person to slip up isn’t his red soulmate which Walt is ashamed to admit surprised him. The heels of his hands are covered in a grass green stain and Walt thinks they scratched their hands stopping themselves falling. Then his blue soulmate breaks two of their fingers, turning Walt’s blue. Two days later, he falls off Beth and breaks his wrist. Once the shock of the pain wears off, he laughs, hoping it’ll cheered up his red soulmate, watching them be the ones to stain their bodies. 

Everything is quiet for while then – apart from some cuts on his jaw like his red soulmate is learning to shave, a couple more scrapes in grass green and a straight bruise across his forehead in ice blue like they bumped their head into something. The only major stain comes from him when a tray he’s taking out of the oven at the café slips and lands on his arm. The head baker cleans it up and raises an eyebrow when Walt laughs because he’s imagining his soulmate’s confusion at the ten-shaped burn. 

Then three things happen in spring break. First, his green soulmate cuts their leg up so badly Walt’s right leg is covered in green lines and patches. They also cut up their face, which leaves a green line through Walt’s right eyebrow, another on his chin and a bruise on his cheek. Second, his blue soulmate gets in a fight, because the green lines on his face are joined with a blue stain along his jaw and several fist sized patches on his chest and stomach. Third, his red soulmate cuts their calf on something that leaves several red slashes behind. Walt swallows his worry and makes sure to be extra careful as they heal. It doesn’t stop him getting appendicitis though. 

-

  


“Ow, ow, ow what the fuck?” Ray whines as he rolls on his bed. The pain on his side is dulled so it must be from one of his soulmates, but it doesn’t make it any better. He doesn’t get much sympathy from his mom except for a hot water bottle because she’s still angry about the whole being stabbed thing. He knows it’s not aimed at him or Dale – who’s a fucking idiot but what’s new – but at the very fact that she nearly lost him. It gives him enough perspective to suck it up and carry on. A yellow line appears three days later – unnaturally straight – and Ray raises an eyebrow because yellow is the most careful of them. He shows his mom, and she tells him it’s probably from an appendectomy. It fades like always. 

He starts college in the September and while his dormmates are a load of shitheads, one of the guys in the electronics club is pretty cool, even though he’s doing a master’s in computer science, which is even nerdier than electrical engineering. Ray looks over his shoulder at the motorcycle schematics on his desk and points out a misplaced piece. Brad tells him to fuck off, but he says it with an intrigued smile. They end up working on the schematics together, huddling around the paper well after the club has ended. When they’re happy with the design, they start to source pieces. Ray cuts up his arms digging through a pile of scrap, but it’s worth it because he finds two matching shock absorbers with little wear. He slides into the workshop, taking in Brad’s long sleeve shirt and how tight it is before showing off his spoils. Brad calls him a filthy hick, but a useful one. Ray beams. 

At the same time, Ray makes friends with the blond barista at Matilda’s – Walt – and he goes by everyday, first for the cookies and then just to talk to Walt. One day he finds a phone number beside his name on the cup and he grins, winking at Walt over the counter. 

A green line appears on his ankle the morning that Brad invites him to a house party. Ray drags Walt along with him because he’s been meaning to introduce him and Brad for a while; both because they’re his two closest friends here and because he thinks they’d like each other. When they get to the party, Brad calls him over and introduces them to Nate, a senior who’s studying classic, who – Brad enthusiastically tells them – managed to fall of his bike and cut his ankle this morning. Ray laughs about both facts and challenges him to a quote off about the Odyssey. Nate’s grin sharpens and Ray finds himself in a fierce battle. 

The party goes well. Brad and Walt get on like a house on fire and Nate’s much cooler than Ray'd expected and as a team they beat Manimal, Chaffin, Budweiser, and Garza at beer pong. When most people start to leave at three am, Brad invites him and Walt to stay. They pull out the sofa bed and Ray sleeps like the dead next to Walt. 

-

  


Brad wakes up later than he usually does, but he allows the slip since he’d drunk a lot the night before. Nate is still asleep beside him – in pyjamas because he never sleeps in anything else, no matter how drunk he is – so Brad slips out as quietly as he can. He finds Ray awake, fiddling with the coffee machine Rudy gave him as a housewarming gift. Brad has to admit he’s impressed that Ray is even conscious, let alone able to move. He can soak up a lot of alcohol in that short body. 

“Fuck off Brad.” is Ray’s reply when he tells him that. 

Brad snorts and grabs another two more mugs from the cupboard. He leans against the counter and watches with amusement as Ray fiddles with the machine, his face narrowed in concentration. He makes a triumphant sound and the machine gurgles coffee out into a mug. When it completes its cycle, he switches the mug out for one that Brad fetched. The coffee machine makes a choking sound and Ray leans forward. 

Hot scalding pain rips across Brad’s face and he flinches to press a hand against the left side of his face, but the wound isn’t on him. He hears a gasp to his left. He looks up to where Ray is pressing his hand to his face, grimacing in pain. He jumps to grab a towel and shove it under the faucet, soaking it in cold water. He pulls Ray to the sink, carefully guiding his hand away from his face and replacing it with the cold towel. He looks to his left - remembering the gasp - and finds Walt sitting up on the sofa bed, his hand pressed to the left side of his face. They make eye contact and Walt pulls his hand away. In its place are three blood red stains, one on his cheek, and the others on the bridge of his nose and above his eyebrow. Brad looks back to Ray, to where he’s holding the towel to the left side of Ray’s face. 

“Brad?” He and Walt turn to the doorway and there’s Nate, in his soft grey pyjama pants and white t-shirt. With three red stains on his face. He looks between Brad and Walt. “You have the same stains.” 

“So do you.” Walt says. Brad turns back to Ray, who’s visible eye is still closed. 

“Ray?” Brad says as he guides Ray over to the armchair. “I need to look at your face.” Ray sits and pulls away from the towel. Brad stares at the three blistering patches on his face: above his eyebrow, on the bridge of his nose and on his cheek. 

“You’re the red soulmate.” Walt says with awe in his voice. Ray cracks one of his eyes open and narrows his eyebrows, wincing when it pulls on his wounds. 

“I’m what?” 

“Our soulmate.” Nate says, stepping forward. Ray’s eyes bounce between the three of them before widening almost comically. 

“Holy shit!” 

-

  


Nate does the responsible thing and calls Doc to make sure Ray is okay. Ray brushes them off but both Nate and Walt put their feet down. Brad holds the cold towel to his face while they wait, and Nate uses the time to order his thoughts because Ray is his red soulmate, that much is obvious. He has a lot of questions, many of which are delicate, and feel wrong to ask when he's only met Ray yesterday so he leaves them alone and instead looks to Walt and Brad. Yellow and blue, though he doesn’t know which for sure. 

“Yellow?” He asks Walt. 

Walt shakes his head, “I don’t get yellow stains.” 

Nate turns his head to Brad, “You’re blue then.” 

Brad grins, “and you’re green. Congratulations.” 

“Well, I’ve always been told it brings out my eyes.” 

Ray snorts. Doc checks him over and tells him to keep the burns clean and not to scratch the scabs off. They stay in the apartment then and while Nate had been hesitant to ask what he desperately wants to know – as Brad seems to as well – it's Walt who shows no reservations. He asks if the abuser is still around and Ray’s eyebrows narrow before realisation dawns on him. He tells them about the last boyfriend his mom ever had – a contractor, large and with a mean streak the size of the Grand Canyon – who told him to keep his mouth shut if he wanted to keep his mom safe. He confesses that he’d felt helpless, furious at the man but unwilling to put his mom at risk. 

“Until,” He says, “I saw your stains.” 

He’d told his mom the truth and she’d immediately kicked the guy’s ass six ways to Sunday. Nate still remembers burning the back of his wrist – still has the scar – and he shows them, telling the story. Brad tells them that he smashed the mirror in his dorm room and Walt confesses that he slipped with the knife intentionally. They share the origins of the stains they remember since there have been so many over the years. Nate learns that the blue streak across his calf when he was thirteen was from a fibreglass fin. The first large yellow stain was when Walt fell off his horse, Beth. The many cuts and scrapes that Nate had feared were the start of abuse were as he’d assumed – Walt tried football unsuccessfully. Then they get to the stabbing. 

“I wasn’t my fault,” Ray says, “the only reason I was there was because Carlos didn’t want Dale going on his own and he wouldn’t let him go.” 

“How did you end up being the one stabbed then?” Brad asks with a raised eyebrow. 

“I may have stepped in the way.” Ray says sheepishly. He, Brad, and Walt all sigh and Ray ducks his head with a small shrug. 

“We’re gonna have to keep a leash on you.” Walt jokes. 

“Kinky.” 

The ten that had confused Nate for the three days it had been on his forearm is explained by Walt, who blushes. Then, Nate admits to wiping out on a corner during a cycling race and shredding his leg and face up. He already knew the blue marks had been from a fight, but he raises an eyebrow when Ray tells them that the slashes had been from barbed wire. He lifts the leg of his jeans to show the several rows of scars. 

“I think we’ll need more than a leash.” Brad says dryly. 

-

  


Their first date is at a bar on campus after their finals. They’d all slept in the same bed that night, and Walt had never felt so tired and so happy at the same time. Waking up with Ray’s hair tickling his nose, Brad’s arm on his shoulder and Nate’s calf against his was probably one of the best moments of his life so far. They take up a whole booth and drink and talk all night. Walt feels warm, pressed against Brad's side after they'd swapped so that everyone has a turn sitting with each other. 

At some point, a set of men arrive and start drinking. Walt doesn’t notice them until Ray starts looking over Brad’s shoulder with wary eyes. Nate looks over as well and that’s when the sound of glass shattering echoes through the bar. Walt turns and see the first punch. Ray is out of the booth before anyone can stop him so Brad follows after him, helping him drag the two men apart. It works for a couple of seconds before their friends jump in. Walt feels two painful jolts – one in his stomach and one on his face – and he looks to Nate, who sighs and nods. 

They stumbled out of the bar as the police start to show up. Ray drags them down several alleyways and they somehow end up on the right street. Walt has the aches of everyone’s bruises but when he looks across to the others – his soulmates – he can’t help but grin. 

-

  


Ray is delighted to find out that when he sucks a hickey on Walt’s neck that night, it appears on everyone. He might have milked that a little, but who can blame him. 

In the morning, he lets Brad make the coffee since the burns on his face still smart. They group around him as they wait, and when Poke comes through the front door, he does a double take. “You white boys look like fucking Picasso paintings with all that shit on your faces.” 

They look at each other - at the stain of three colours on each of their faces - and burst into laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this was supposed to be a different fic but I got 9000 words into it and realised I wouldn't be able to finish it in time to the level I wanted, so I decided to start a different one. Three days later and we have this XD
> 
> Tomorrow: Day 6: Cas-evac/ WW2 AU/ Hurt/Comfort


End file.
